Visit Facing the World exhibition at Edinburgh Art Festival

The many ways that artists have created works using their own image is explored in a major international exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this summer, launched as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival and running from 16 July to 16 October 2016

Facing the World, which is part of the Creative Europe-supported Cooperation Project Ich bin hier, Europäischer Gesichter, involving National Galleries of Scotland, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon as partners, draws on the strengths of three outstanding European collections and brings together many images by a wide range of European artists, some of which may be unfamiliar to British audiences.

In addition to a wide range of media represented in the exhibition - paintings, drawings, photographs, time-based media and sculpture - the show features two interactive installations: FLICK_EU and FLICK_EU MIRROR. Visitors are encouraged to make portraits of themselves inside a photo booth; the resulting images are broadcast in the exhibition and online at www.i-am-here.eu.

Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, commented: “The incredible quality and range of works in this major European exhibition will be a revelation. It addresses the fundamental issue of how artists have chosen to present themselves to the world from the seventeenth century to today, through a staggering array of imagery, which displays prodigious technical and expressive achievements. Intimate, impressive and provocative, the works selected for the show provide insights to the lives, skills and preoccupations of many major artists and illustrate the enduring power of self-portraiture.”